Image of the Mary Erskine and Ravelston Woods map

Mary Erskine School & Ravelston Woods

ESOC Local Event

Sun 12th Sep 2021

Type of event: Local
Near: City of Edinburgh

Results are here

Winsplits are here

ORGANISER'S COMMENTS from Janet Clark: There were lots of things about this afternoon to really enjoy and appreciate:
The lovely grounds of the Mary Erskine School; with the adjacent slightly more complex Ravelston Woods.
The willing co-operation of the Sports Centre, providing access to the grounds and mains electricity
The cool dry weather, ideal for running.
Forty members of the school orienteering club enthusiastically competing with each other.
A good number of non-members finding their way through the obligatory pre-entry system.
The extra bonus for young children of the Short White Course that they could do by themselves; very exciting!
The hardworking small team of club volunteers who made everything run smoothly.
Lots to love about orienteering!

PLANNERS’ COMMENTS from Katherine Kirk & Thea Thomas: For an area which is not “out in the wilds” Mary Erskine School and Ravelston Woods has some surprisingly hazardous parts – the high crags and quarries. There is also a danger of moving traffic at several points on the site which needed to be taken account of on White and Yellow courses. These factors dominated the planning, along with the single crossing point between the School and the Woods, and the “pinch points” to get around the sports pitches.

Planning originally started in January 2020 and resumed in August 2021 when we got a date for the event. It was good to have the 2021 map version which incorporated new buildings and paths close to the school. Thea drafted White and Yellow and repeated her innovation of Toddle Course (Short White) designed as a chance for young novice competitors to try something very short and safe on their own or with a little help. We recommend it to anyone planning on a suitable area!

It was interesting to use the multi-level school buildings, and the woodland area has some tiny lovely areas with pine trees which I wanted people to visit. Since there were many paths I tried to maximise the number of decisions needed on the Green course. The other key aim was to get the Yellow participants safely out of the woods. Thea said it was fun to plan but hard to get enough distance for White and Yellow.

On the day we had two issues, two controls swapped numbers between the penultimate and final version of the courses, so we had to renumber with sticky labels. An incorrect control placement on Green was rescued out in the forest by an experienced early starter. Apologies to competitors, and thanks very much to the computing and download team for dealing with this complication and fixing it in the results.

ESOC Ultrasprint 2021, Inch Park

Maze combined with Park orienteering

Sun 22nd Aug 2021

Type of event: Local
Near: City of Edinburgh

Provisional results can be found here and the cumulative results here.

Organiser, Janet Clark writes: The Ultrasprint is a fun event for the competitors, but it also has several unique complexities in execution. These were tackled with aplomb by the Maze-setting Team, the Control-placing Team and the Computer Team (ie Gordon), all skilfully overseen by Sabine, who acted as both Planner and Controller on the day.

This particular event was originally planned for two years ago by Callum Tyler who has since moved to France, and was carefully updated and amended by Sabine and Simon Gregersen, together with the original Controller Roger Scrutton.

The action started slowly and gathered pace as people started their second and third runs, got the hang of the Maze, and warmed up enough to put in good efforts on the uphill run-in to the Finish, cheered on by the onlookers. Then at the end the competition for the fastest time for the Maze-only got pretty fierce. How could anyone possibly do it in under two minutes?

Grateful thanks to the very well-oiled team of helpers who set up and dismantled everything so smoothly, and to the Inch park Community Centre for letting us add orienteering to the wide range of other activities happening at the same time.

A fun event that will be our first post Covid restrictions proper event.

Penicuik, Ladywood Sprintelope

Wed 11th Aug 2021

Type of event: Local
Near: Penicuik

Provisional results are Here. Thank-you to all the honest people who confessed they had missed part of the course: I have marked then as disqualified. A few name changes may not have been recorded correctly: please email corrections to

Planner Alison writes: Thanks to those who came to the Penicuik Sprintelope. The 3.1km Short and 4.6km Long courses were planned to have a number of terrain transitions to switch up the style/speed of orienteering between runnable parkland, wooded valley and fast intricate urban estate. In the end, it poured down with rain for the duration of the event, meaning that bums came in useful alongside hands, knees and feet to navigate the slippery muddy slopes!

It was great to see a number of juniors coming along, shadowed by their parents.

Apologies for the couple of places where map updates would have been useful (will brush up my OCAD skills for next time).

Congratulations to Ben Brown / Rona Lindsay and James Ackland / Helen Bridle who came in first male/female on the Short and Long respectively. Thank you to Janet, Alistair, my sister Sarah and the Robertson family for help in organising and collecting tapes.

Very informal urban sprint event

Viewforth Sprintelope

Wed 21st Jul 2021

Type of event: Local
Near: City of Edinburgh

Results are here.

How about entering ESOC's next Sprintelope at Penicuik Ladywood on 11th August? Full details here.

Viewforth Planner Jim Murdoch writes: First all I'd like to say thanks to everybody for coming and it was great to see lots of smiling faces in the sun at the start of the event. A special thanks to Janet and Robert for providing the technical assistance in getting the event running smoothly.
On a blisteringly hot Edinburgh evening the Sprintelopers gathered in a quiet corner of West End Edinburgh for a tour of the local streets. First of all taking in the big hill up Viewforth before a merciful dash downhill towards the Lochrin Basin and the flatter roads and paths along the canal. I hope everyone gave homage to the birthplace of Sir Sean Connery as they passed the plaque between control 12 and 13.
Mercifully no reports of people on the long course forgetting to turn the map over or those on the short course missing their cut-off.
The chat at the end of the event seemed to centre on the route choice between 22 and 23, with all choices deemed bad and too long on such a hot night! Especially when you're so near the end and ready for some strawberries and a nice cool drink. So I'd just like to apologise for planning such a vindictive route choice on such a hot night, but that is after all what a good orienteering planner should do.
I'm looking forward to seeing what the next planner has in store for us at Penicuik, Ladywood Sprintelope on 11th August. Hopefully something equally vindictive.

Informal urban sprint event

Calton Hill Sprintelope

Wed 07th Jul 2021

Type of event: Local, Sprint
Near: City of Edinburgh

The results for the Calton Hill Sprintelope are here

Planner, Oli Warlow writes: First of all, well done to all who took part in what was quite a physically demanding and for the later starters quite a wet course, also to Sasha and Laurence for quickest times on long and short respectively.

This was my first-time planning and it was good to hear positive comments about the courses at the end (nice to see groups hunched over their maps at the finish deep in conversation). I tried to make what I thought would be an interesting course and take advantage of the terrain available for some route choice and physical challenges. C19 on the long proved a little trickier than intended with the summer vegetation having grown up since I planned and the wet steep slope becoming very difficult for those in road shoes! The steps at the back of the Omni centre seemed to divide opinion, they were not mandatory for optimal route choice except for maybe the fittest hill climbers! Apologies to those on the short that C2 seemed to have been half ripped off leaving a very small stub, C4 on the long got moved at some point in the evening to a different bush and C9 also on the long was removed all together!

Thanks to Peter Halling for providing very useful input and guidance from the planning side, Janet for getting us all organised both beforehand and on the night and to Alistair Armitage for heroically sheltering under the brolly with his laptop manning the download.

See you all at another event soon!

Remember to enter our next Sprintelope at Viewforth on 21st July.

Informal urban sprint event

Craig a Barns

Scottish Individual Championships 2021

Sun 13th Jun 2021

Type of event: Regional
Near: Dunkeld

The results are here.

Winsplits are here

Routegadget is here

A full list of Scottish Champions and medal winners has now been posted on the SOA website.

NOTE FROM THE CONTROLLER, SARAH DUNN: Unfortunately, control 114 was incorrectly placed on a crag 20m to the north west of the boulder where it should have been sited. This affected competitors on the light green, blue and black courses. An official protest was made by a competitor on M60L. To make the results as fair as possible we have removed the split for the ingoing leg to 114 from each of these courses. The outgoing legs should not have been affected by the error, however, one competitor on M60L failed to find the control, so for that class only we have also removed the outgoing leg from 114. The results for M60L are now recorded as a separate course (BlueM60). Removal of the outgoing leg from other classes would have unfairly penalised runners who accurately navigated the following leg, compared with those that lost time there.

THANKS FROM THE ORGANISERS: A huge thank you to everyone who came to the Scottish Championships at Craig a Barns. The courses were well planned, the sun shone and the views from starts were spectacular. Hopefully everyone enjoyed this welcome return to high level orienteering in Scotland.
Thanks also to the whole ESOC team of volunteers and to Controller Sarah from MAROC.
It’s good to be in action again.

LOST PROPERTY: Car key found in parking field. Presumably a spare as there were no cars left at 5pm when car park closed. Contact: to describe it (manufacturer’s name) and arrange return.

Incorporates a Scottish Orienteering League (SOL) event. Ok